Wednesday, July 30, 2008

This is a great painting of Carol done by comic artist and fellow story guy Steve Purcell. Steve did this painting of Carol as a wedding gift for Michele and I three years ago. Check out more great paintings by Steve at Spudvision!

Friday, July 25, 2008

My brother and his in-laws are doing some kind of race with floating cucumbers in a creek or river at their next family event. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but it sounds fun! My brother wanted to have shirts for their team, so he asked me to draw up a logo. I realized later that I've actually drawn more of a pickle than a cucumber, what with the bumps, or warts, or whatever those tiny nodes are on a pickle. Also, there's no way to draw a cucumber splashing through the water that doesn't look like an angry, unhealthy stool, skidding across the bowl.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

I was in Chicago last week and I had dinner at a restaurant that served the best photograph of chicken I ever eaten. The place is called Moto ; It’s known for creating the latest “high – tech”, Avant-Garde, gourmet dishes around. After eating there, I can honestly say I feel I have experienced the future.

Moto is located in Chicago’s meatpacking district, which in mid-July smells like a wet dog’s crotch. We arrived at the restaurant, which as you might expect was humorlessly modern, very dark, muted colors, barren walls, like an Ikea with more expensive food. The host searched for our reservations until he announced, “Ah, you must have reservations at Moto, this is Otom. Moto is next door.”

We left Otom, sat down at Moto, and we ordered the menu’s ten course meal, which is actually eleven if you count the menu itself, which I do considering I ate it. The menu was made of an edible paper that’s actually quite good. Still there’s something upsetting to me about eating typography, or print of any kind. My friend Steve once drew a cartoon on a pancake with a sharpie and ate it, the pancake not the sharpie. Anyway, the whole thing put me off pancakes and cartoons for about a week.

After finishing the menu, the real food started coming in and what followed were a series of incredibly eccentric, tiny meals, each with it’s own bizarre gimmick. The first course was the “Greek Salads” with featured two separate Greek salads, neither of which looked like anything like a salad. The one on the right side of my plate was made up of two tiny pieces of octopus covered in some kind of lettuce puree, and on the left was an eye dropper filled with clear liquid. The waitress said we should eat some of the salad on the right, and then do a shot of the salad on the left. The liquid salad was interesting, tasted a little bit like drinking Greek salad dressing straight out of the bottle, but it was good. The salad was followed by the “Popcorn Ball”; tiny balls that had been soaking in liquid nitrogen, and crackled in the back of your throat like “pop rocks”. This was similar to the gin and tonic course. A gin and tonic served inside a gelatinous, quivering mound of gel perched on the end of your spoon. You’re instructed to put it all the way in your mouth, bit down, and TA – DA!!… You’re drunk!

The next course was the “House made Pequin Chile Quail” or as I call it “the Picture of Chicken”. It looked like a faded newspaper clipping of chicken wings. It even had a caption underneath describing the meal. It was served on a strip of bent metal and was held in place by a tiny marble. Accompanying the photo was an actual small portion of three-dimensional quail. The photo tasted good, like hot wings you would eat at a sports bar. I have no idea how they got the paper to taste like that, but I can only hope it’s something more scientific then letting it soak at the bottom of a KFC bucket for a few hours.

And then came my favorite meal of all, both in taste and execution, and as they placed it in front of me I was struck by how much “The Road kill of Foul” actually looked like an execution. This was a delicious duck confit prepared to look like a rotting, blood soaked, maggot-covered, animal carcase smeared across the road. The only difference is that this blood was made up of a delightful red beet puree, while the maggots were crafted out of tiny puffed wild rice.

Three hours later the meal was over and I had to admit, I had a lot of fun, the food was great, and the novelty really kept us all entertained the whole time! We were constantly cracking up at the absurdity of each meal. And as I watched my friend take photos of his space food with his thin silver space phone/camera, I truly felt I was witnessing the future of dining, but not fine dinning. I saw instead a vision of tourist and rubes like me getting a big kick out of a place like this. Rolling their eyes and calling the waiter over to make the same old jokes, “ I’m still a little hungry, can I have a “to-go” menu to eat when I get home?” This restaurant is likely the future Bennigan’s, the future Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, or the future TGI Friday’s, only the irreverent, crazy crap isn’t going to be on the walls, it’ll be on your edible plate.

Friday, July 18, 2008

The Afterworks blog has just begun advertising the new 3rd edition of the comic compilation. The book is made up of stories written and illustrated by some of the top artist working in the animation industry. This is my first year contributing to the project, and I couldn't be more excited to finally be apart of this great book! The 3rd edition comes out sometime early next year, and you can keep up on all things related to Afterworks 3 here.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

I did the drawing for this painting of my dog Carol murdering her terrifying stuffed, poke-a-dot, bone awhile back but felt it wasn't good enough to bother finishing. I'm glad I took another shot at it, because I think I was able to salvage the drawing in the execution of the finished painting. I'm actually pretty happy with this one, but not so happy that I'm the kind of guy that paints stuff like this.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Awhile back I posted some oil paintings I was working on for a project that were less than successful. After three attempts I finally finished a piece I was really happy with. Today the Totoro Forest Project website went up, and I'm so proud that my painting is included with so many incredible talented artist. Click on the link above to learn more about the project, and to see all the other amazing artists contributions to this auction.

Update! Okay, it's a lot of work to click on a bunch of stuff. Here is the final piece I entered for the auction. You can read about the piece by clicking the link above and finding my name (Dan Scanlon) listed by first name under the artist link.Third times a charm.

Friday, July 04, 2008

I was walking down Polk street with Michele the other morning, and a thin oily guy jumped out at us, pointed violently at his right eye and cackled, “Hey, I got it, you look like Michael B. Hayden with a little Russian in him!”Now I have no idea who Michael B. Hayden is, but I google image searched him and well, I just don't know that it adds up. Still I want to thank the crazy homeless guy for his suggestion, and thank him for being such a big fan of our blog.

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Here are two of my favorite July 4th photos. A few years ago I took Michele back to my hometown of Clawson, Michigan to see our Fourth of July parade. This was the first time a lot of my relatives had met Michele, my then girlfriend, so my Aunt Dorothy wanted to make sure she got a really nice picture of the two of us together to show the Aunts and Uncles that couldn’t be there. She snapped one posed picture of me with my arm around Michele. Not being a digital camera, she wanted to take a second one to insure she’d gotten a nice picture of both of us together. It’s a good thing she did, because this was the first photo she took.

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

I was surprised at work today with a belated Birthday party and a great card signed by everyone on the story team. The card featured a caricature of me drawn by the very talented James Robertson. I think he did a stellar job of capturing my "secret service/retired umpire" fashion style. Not to mention all the various shades of brown that make up my wardrobe.